December 10, 2009

Having practiced in the front yard the previous evening, yesterday, I was deemed ready to ski from one end of our block to the other. Then, we threw the skis in the back of the car and drove over to Picnic Point. I think I put in close to a mile on skis. Haven't fallen yet. Haven't scooted out of control anywhere. Just loving the snow... and the ski instructor.

Your husband has given you a great gift. I introduced my wife to long distance running by encouraging her to jog one minute and walk five. Within a few months she ran three miles without stopping. She has now logged 9 marathons to my 3 and can outrun me anytime.

Not all relationships can survive when one partner instructs the other.

Many find it hard to be patient with someone they are emotionally invested in, in the same way they can be with a stranger or casual acquaintance. Likewise, the instructee often finds being instructed more difficult in response.

That you two can handle this probably says something about your personalities, and the strength of what you have.

Did you just ski across the lake, or is there another trail near Picnic Point? I'm taking up XC skiing again having taken a long hiatus. There are a lot of nice trails near Baraboo where I live, Devils Lake among others.

It's wonderful exercise and one of the few I looked forward to when living in the North, in the winter.

As a nature guy, I also found a curious phenomenon when doing trails in the woods....for some reason, my experience was the motion of a cross country skiier is different enough from walking that animals could be approached closer than by a human on foot (or they just stayed where they were and ignored the strange gliding things that passed by them).

Two male ruffled grouse staged a fight one time and tumbled right over my then GF's skis. We passed by the local herd of elk, ignored, on a few other occasions. A good compact set of binocs is a wise addition, too, because you notice things off trail with the loss of leaf cover you may not have seen if you went the same way in spring through fall. But difficult to get to by breaking trail on skis. One year we found a small cave blocked from ordinary view by heavy brush and went back in the summer and found Indian sign (soot on top of entrance, chert flakes lying right on floor of the tiny space, and a fissure in the rock blocked by wedged stone and mud.). A local ex BF of my then GF was an amateur archaeologist and pronounced it "virgin" and Ohio State excavated it in 1992.

May you have similar enjoyment and even discovery, Meade and Althouse! (And I wish many times I had had a digital camera, back in the day....the SLR was bulky and a real bother to good smooth skiing...there were lots of "oh, I wish we had a camera with us" moments.)

Sounds great! I have a friend who was talking about breaking out the cross-country skis here on Monday when it snowed heavily, but she didn't end up doing it. I was thinking about going snow-shoeing that day, but I didn't do that, either. Maybe I'll do one or the other this weekend, depending on the conditions.

Bissage: Your Picabo Street joke reminds me of the old Frank Deford line about her name sounding like "the red light district in a Disney movie."